MAGNOLIA, Ark. – The Southern Arkansas Lady Mulerider Basketball team capped their 2015-16 regular season campaign with an impressive 75-41 victory over Southern Nazarene on Senior Day inside the W.T. Watson Center on Saturday afternoon. "Bartlesville Bound" after an 18-win regular season and a fourth-place finish in the league standings, SAU tied an NCAA Division II program record for wins in a season with Saturday's triumph.
 
The Lady Muleriders (18-8, 14-8 GAC) will open play in next Friday's opening round of the 2016 Great American Conference Tournament as the fourth-seed, their highest seeding in three trips to the conference tourney, against fifth-seeded Henderson State at 8 p.m. In their previous two meetings this season, SAU topped HSU in both contests by an average of just 10.5 points.
 
In Saturday's matchup with SNU, Southern Arkansas was powered by a trio of double figure scorers in seniors Tierra Tucker (19), Shana Holmes (17) and Rosa Bryant (13). The three players all logged 30-plus minutes and combined for eight assists. Holmes was 4-of-4 from beyond the arc, while Tucker and Bryant combined for seven steals on the defensive end. Bryant grabbed a team-high 13 rebounds in recording her 19^th double-double of the season. Classmates Shunta Nevitt and Destavia Davis combined for 23 minutes of work and four rebounds, one block and one steal.
 
Southern Arkansas forced 22 Crimson Storm turnovers that they turned into 22 points, while also dominating inside as they outscored SNU in the paint, 41-16. The Lady Muleriders turned in nine points off of transition basketball.
 
Defensively, SAU forced the Crimson Storm to shoot at just over 24% (16-of-65) from the floor and held SNU to just ten free throw attempts (60%).
 
Southern Nazarene scored the first bucket of the game via a free throw at the 8:50 mark of the opening quarter and took their final lead after a successful jumper on their next trip down the court with less than two and a half minutes into regulation. It was all Southern Arkansas from that point forward as the Lady Muleriders led 20-11 after the first quarter and 35-23 at the intermission.
 
It was the third quarter that saw SAU engineer a 17-5 run to head into the final ten minutes with a 24-point advantage, 52-28. Alyssa Hamilton scored five of her nine points and picked up two steals in the third quarter, while finishing her 19 minutes of action with seven rebounds. The Lady Muleriders scored 23 points in the fourth quarter en route to their largest margin of victory against a GAC-opponent this season.
 
SAU will take to the court inside Bruin Fieldhouse in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, for the 2016 GAC Tournament with the aforementioned round one affair with Henderson State on Friday, March 4, at 8 p.m.
 
Be sure to visit muleriderathletics.com for continuing postseason coverage of Lady Mulerider basketball including pregame and postgame updates, the coach's show with head coach Julio Pacheco, and potential postseason awards announcements.